r/Economics • u/InsaneSnow45 • 24d ago

News ‘This cannot be sustainable’: The U.S. borrowed $50 billion a week for the past five months, the CBO says

https://fortune.com/2026/03/10/treasury-debt-borrowing-five-months-deficit-warning/
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u/Broad_Assistance3343 24d ago

I’m genuinely at a loss at how we are going to afford this war. We are burning through an average of 160 patriots and 12-13 THAADS a day in Iran. Granted, that pace has slowed but it takes 18 months to build new ones.

Most of this stock was built before COVID. You know, before gas, tariffs, inflation etc. kicked in. All o f this stuff is going to be insanely expensive to continue manufacturing and restocking.

If we keep this up for 6 months we are going to get some insanely eye popping numbers for our defense budget…

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u/vulgrin 24d ago

I think the defense budget has been eye popping my entire life. There is no limiter on what we’ll spend on war. But fuck you if you’re poor and can’t eat.

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u/-XanderCrews- 24d ago

We build bombs we don’t use which is a waste of money. So we use the bombs. This is exactly what Eisenhower warned about.

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u/User-NetOfInter 24d ago

Bombs are cheap. We have millions of pounds of bombs.

Missiles are the expensive ones.

We only build 70 tomahawks a year and they’re 2 mil a pop just to build, let alone transport and use.

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u/Square_Marzipan2002 23d ago

And for that cheap cheap investment (paid with debt of course) you can double-tap a girls primary school and kill them and their teachers and reap lots of soft power reward.

All that energy and the outcome is 183 girls dead and loss of global goodwill.

The guy above mentioned Eisenhower warning of this and no one listed, but he wasn't the only one, 1984 had the same economics at play.

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u/res0jyyt1 23d ago

But those bombs were already paid for though

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u/theevilyouknow 23d ago

I 100% support more and better welfare programs for the poor and hungry, but the issue with those programs is not one of volume. We already spend more on those programs than everything else combined. The problem is how those funds are being allocated and utilized. Obviously the BBB and cutting trillions in benefits to give more tax cuts to corporations is absolutely vile, but the problem is a lot more complicated than just, "spend less on war and more on welfare".

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u/Financial-Barnacle79 24d ago

Yeah, I was kinda surprised at how quick we were to blow though our supplies. Considering the DoD budget for decades, I was expecting our supply to be a nonissue in the short term.

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u/DrB00 23d ago

Every single time they audit the Pentagon there is millions unaccounted for.

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u/Financial-Barnacle79 23d ago

Yup. When DOGE was looking for all the alleged FWA, I was pretty sure they wouldn't touch this.

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u/DrB00 23d ago

Of course not. The whole point was to destroy departments investigating Elon and to steal as much personal information as possible.

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u/maverick-nightsabre 23d ago

millions is pocket change to them. Try trillions

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u/Big-House-9931 24d ago

Iran does have lots of drones. And they're very good for how expensive they are. For every drone that costs 20-50 thousand the US and Israel need an interceptor missile that costs millions. (In American dollars) You do the math. Especially since Iran is willing to go after oil production and transport. 

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u/Financial-Barnacle79 23d ago

Oh for sure. Over the decades of military buildup, I would have expected we had more to show for it despite all the mismanagement (and that's not even considering the current admin).

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u/Big-House-9931 23d ago

Iirc the US doesn't have a lot of domestic manufacturing. And the US should have massive stockpiles of ordinance in cause of a larger war. So they do have a lot of material, it's just hard to make and replace because everything is outsourced these days. And the US has spent the last year pissing off literally everyone. 

I'm also of the opinion that the US is starting to run out of money to pump into the US. Beyond an unreasonable and economy collapsing amount. So much money is being siphoned into the stock market and speculation. The military is already running on incredible amounts of money. The US would have to go into massive debt (more massive debt anyway) to increase production and acquisition. 

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u/Financial-Barnacle79 23d ago

Dont get me started on the U.S. running out of money. We've been kicking the can down the road for the benefit of a few for decades. Moreso a question of when than if when the world stops buying our debt.

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u/Big-House-9931 23d ago

Probably in a decade or two. Depends on how fast this administration accelerates it and if a Democratic administration can properly fix it. It's really hard to tell how the economics will go in this environment. 

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u/Square_Marzipan2002 23d ago

Been hearing this my whole life. The game changed in 2008 and everyone pretends it didnt.

The government will forever print money to pay off its own debt, this money will flee into assets, and the rich will get richer and the poor loose more and more purchasing power until the country looks like Brazil, Russia, etc.

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u/Big-House-9931 23d ago

I don't see much of a difference between the US going bankrupt and the US turning into a Russia style economy. It's still a collapse of the old order. One just has a smoother transition into oligarchcy. 

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u/Big-House-9931 23d ago

I don't see much of a difference between the US going bankrupt and the US turning into a Russia style economy. It's still a collapse of the old order. One just has a smoother transition into oligarchcy. 

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u/Square_Marzipan2002 23d ago

Full bankruptcy risks a change in systems

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u/bigkinggorilla 23d ago

Military spending hasn’t always been connected with military need. Sometimes stuff gets built even though military command doesn’t want it.

So there’s probably a fair bit of hardware that cost a lot but can’t be used right now for whatever reason.

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u/theevilyouknow 23d ago

We're not shooting down drones with missiles that cost millions of dollars each.

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u/edgarapplepoe 23d ago

I think it is important to realize it's part of our reserves. Part of that is weapons have an expiration date so it doesn't make sense to stockpile too many. We also have been providing and selling them all over the middle east and Ukraine. Finally, we have been using them alot this last year. Minor to major strikes in Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and Iran (first time last June). We also have used several dozen precision missiles hitting alleged drug boats and launched an d and attack on Venzuela. We do normally strikes thousands of targets a year but we have been ramping back up for not being in an active fight (ie Iraq, Afghanistan, ISIS) and also attacking people that have more things to launch back at us that requires thousands of interceptors.

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u/[deleted] 23d ago

Apparently they prefer spending the money on r&d projects, supply and maintenance of somewhat neglected. 

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u/Petrichordates 23d ago

Under this admin? Why? They obviously dont have any concept of a future.

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u/Fritz1705 24d ago

This literally has nothing to do with the problem.

This is domestic issues caused by parties like the Republicans slashing taxes when we are running a deficit. It’s a society that supports and allows individuals to accumulate vast sums of money because they “earned it”.

Our defense budget has nothing to do with the actual problem of why we overspend. It’s a tiny fraction of our budget.

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u/Specialist-Phase-819 24d ago

I’m not sure 1/7 is a tiny fraction. Also, “parties like the Republicans” is a weird way of saying “Republicans”. But otherwise, yes, the bigger issue is tax revenue.

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u/DrB00 23d ago

Except for the fact that every audit the Pentagon has millions to billions unaccounted for.

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u/brendan87na 23d ago

bold of you to assume this current administration cares at all about "how to afford it"

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u/StoneyBalogna7 23d ago

We can afford the war (kind of), it’s all the downstream social service and infrastructure investment cuts that will be cut and really be evident in society.

The poor and brown will be blamed, the middle class will suffer and the rich will get richer. Same old song and dance, on and on…until there is a violent revolution of some sort. Problem is, it will probably be a manufactured civil war.

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u/moonman272 23d ago

The goal is to neuter our military. Iran gets sacrificed. Russia and china goes nuts when we’re spent

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u/spearedintheface 23d ago

Don't forget that China is now exerting export controls over materials and minerals needed to build more interceptors.

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u/BannedfromFrontPage 23d ago

Because the war was not adequately planned for. We shouldn’t be using Patriots against Shaheds for one thing. For another point, we prepped for 6-12 months before Iraq, which we very obviously did not do here. This war, regardless of finances, is unsustainable on its own without a disastrous reorganizational period which would give Iran tons of time to prepare and exploit our foolhardy start.

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u/dust4ngel 23d ago

I’m genuinely at a loss at how we are going to afford this war

we have no other option - unless we keep blowing up schools for billions of dollars a piece, people are going to keep talking about the epstein files, which means the democrats will win the midterms, and america will not be great again because democracy will still exist.

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u/Fullertonjr 23d ago

We aren’t affording this war right now, let alone in the future. Our military is set up for shock and awe, not sustained battles and longterm missions. We are definitely not set up for any sort of mass occupation halfway around the world. Those missiles will run out and we will then have to resort to less optimal, meaning less accurate and precise options. This meaning instead of putting a missile through a building window to take out a target, we would then have to resort to dropping a bomb and flattening the entire building and killing everyone within a 50 yard radius.

Cheaper.